Digital overtakes physical sales for the first time; music industry growing again

Perhaps appropriately as we come up on the 10th anniversary of Apple's iTunes store, Nielsen is reporting that digital music now accounts for 55.9% of all music sales in the United States; both singles and full albums.

In terms of actual numbers; digital albums sold nearly 120 million units, and digital tracks were at 1.34 billion units.
Also noteworthy is that while CD sales decreases by more than 10%, music sales in general are up more than 3% overall. This comes after a decade of declining sales. The "Alternative" category - which includes punk and indie rock - is the most popular non-rock category in digital, but genres like country and R&B are catching up quickly.

Check out the full report here.